The impact of pictures on Facebook

I follow some of the top social media bloggers and picked up a great tip about using pictures on Facebook.

I like how Facebook pulls in an image with an article, but the blogger (I can't remember who...tried to find the link but couldn't find it...) suggested taking advantage of the option to use bigger images by posting a photo with a link to the article (instead of posting the URL and pulling in the photo automatically.) When you do this, the photo is MUCH larger.

So, today I tried it when I posted to Home Energy Saver's Facebook page. (Look for the chart on "Residential Energy Costs in the U.S.) I uploaded the photo that went with the article and simply added the link in the text. We had a dramatic improvement in the number of likes and shares.

Here are the stats:

Usually (Just posting the link which pulls in an image to the left of the link):

5-10 people like a post

4-8 share it on their timeline

Today (Posted photo and added the link):

30 people "liked" the post

36 people shared it on their timeline

Wow! Big difference!

I know a lot of pros have Facebook pages for their businesses. Try this and see if you get good results too. Does anyone else have other tips to share about best practices for Facebook?

Be sure to join the Facebook Group to post the link to your Facebook page.

Facebook's image display confuses me: On your page, some link images are column wide and others are the small preview image. Maybe it has to do with the image size on the linked page? It does seem that if the linked image is large, then the preview is column-wide on both FB and Google+, and if it's not it's more of a thumbnail.

Also, it seems like uploaded images don't link to the page when clicked, which doesn't seem as beneficial.